Vanilla Mac utility hides annoying menu bar icons

 

 

• If you own a Mac computer, have you ever looked at the
  top right corner of your screen and wondered where all of those
  app icons came from?
• Believe it or not, Apple’s operating system for Mac
  computers does not have a built-in way to hide app icons in
  your menu bar, especially if you don’t want or need
  them.
• Developer Matthew
  Palmer built a great utility that solves this issue, called
  Vanilla.
• Vanilla is totally free to download.

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If you own a Mac computer, look at the top right corner of your
screen. You’ll probably see several little app icons.

Some of the most popular apps, like Google Drive or the Adobe
Creative Cloud, load up your menu bar with icons. But maybe you
don’t want to bother with deleting those apps, or trying to find
a setting to turn off those icons.

Enter Vanilla, the easiest way to manage all of those annoying
app icons in your menu bar.

Just visit this
website, and click the big green button that says “Download
Vanilla for free.”

Once it’s finished downloading, move the file to your
Applications folder, and open it up.

You’ll notice your menu bar just got a couple of new symbols: a
carrot sign, and a dot. Click the command (⌘) key and drag
and drop your icons as you please: The ones you want to hide go
between the carrot symbol and the dot, while the icons you want
to show will go to the right of the dot, like so:

Dave Smith/Business Insider

When you click on the carrot, it will collapse to the location of
the dot, hiding the app icons you’ve chosen to bury. It looks
like this.

Dave Smith/Business Insider

You can reveal your app icons again by pressing the carrot sign
one more time.

The app is free and works great as-is, but if you pay $5, you can
unlock the “Pro Version” of Vanilla, which features some nifty
abilities like being able to toggle your icons with keyboard
shortcuts, or the ability to completely remove the menu bar icons
you don’t want.